Recently in SUSE Category

As an experiment, I decided to bring my Evolutionary Computing presentation on making the journey into free, open-source software — a slide show originally created in OpenOffice Impress 2.4 — into Google Docs, which happens to have a presentation app in addition to the better-known Docs and Spreadsheets components.

I revised the presentation — taking some things out, adding others and providing some updates on what I'm doing — and output it as a PDF.

Download that PDF for your reading pleasure by clicking on the image above or the link below:

Evolutionary Computing (revised July 2009)

Interesting note: I believe that no previous entry on this blog has been filed under so many categories. (And I've been considering dumping Categories entirely and just using tags ...)

Here's the deal: I've been fighting with Debian Lenny for months on The $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), where I have everything running great except for my persistent problem with screen refresh in X. I've replaced the Intel i810 driver with the plain Intel driver, I've tweaked everything that can be tweaked in xorg.conf.

I can't really get work done while my display is slowly disintegrating during the course of a computing session.

I'm already running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS as the main distro on this system, and I've been thinking about what to do for the second distro. I'd go back to Debian Etch, but I had problems with the speed of the USB-connected mouse vs. the Alps touchpad, plus problems controlling the touchpad on its own.

In Lenny, the problems I've dealt with (and mostly solved) over the past six or more months have included suddenly disappearing sound (fixed with manually installed ESS Allegro modules), and an Epiphany browser that would always start in offline mode (fixed with a modification to Gconf2, if I have the name of the app right).

Nothing major — and nothing that couldn't be fixed with some help from either the bug reports themselves or other helpful people on the Web.

But this screen-refresh problem persists. I keep hoping that a routine software upgrade will take care of it, but that hasn't happened in countless xorg, driver and kernel updates. I don't think it's going to happen, either.

If you're running something that's very popular that catches the attention of developers (like the Asus Eee PC), chances are good that issues will be resolved. But I can't imagine any developers anywhere are paying any attention whatsoever to my 2002-era Gateway laptop. I'm no C hacker, so there's nothing much I can do, either.

I love Debian. I'm running two newish Etch installs right now (one PowerPC, one i386), and I could very well add a third with my $15 Laptop (Compaq Armada 7770dmt), or even more to a couple of testing desktops I have waiting in the wings. Whenever Lenny goes Stable, Etch will have another year's worth of patches as Old Stable before it reaches its end of life.

Etch has been great, and Lenny has made dozens of improvements. But this one regression has made it very hard to keep my favorite distro on my main laptop.

So I have been thinking for months about what to do, all the while hoping that I could fix the X problem in Lenny.

First of all, I need to rewire the power supply plug. I think that is what is responsible for my intermittent freezes in Ubuntu (which don't seem to happen in Lenny, for reasons unknown). When I have the laptop on a desk, it never freezes, but when it's on my actual lap, as it was when I was trying to work on last-minute election programming yesterday morning, those freezes can really throw me off. I moved over to Debian, but I needed the Java runtime, didn't have it installed and didn't have the time to do that.

And then there's the video issue.

So I've been thinking, what should I install in place of Debian Lenny? I'm a big fan of long-term support releases, especially for older hardware, so I strongly considered CentOS 5, a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. But the relative lack of consumer-oriented software had me worried. I could add the Dag Wieers repositories to deal with that issue, but even that repository doesn't cover everything I need.

Mandriva is also on the table, as is one of my favorite distros, Wolvix. The Slackware 11-based Wolvix is due for a new version soon. While its package mix addresses most of my issues, there are a few things that I can't easily find for it. And I worry in Wolvix's case (as well as Slackware's in general) about how long the kernel goes without getting patched.

I almost never see new kernels for older Slackware releases. I don't know if that's because they are unnecessary, but with patched kernels rolling into Debian and Ubuntu fairly regularly, I wonder why Slackware does things differently.

I'd run "regular" Slackware, but I had quite a bit of trouble getting X configured, and I'd rather use GNOME than KDE. I know there are GNOME projects for Slackware, but what I'm trying to do is install something that works well, comes together easily and has lots of available packages.

Given all the Mandriva fans on LXer, I considered it. I've used the Mandriva-derived PCLinuxOS and thought highly of it — and I may in fact go that way. The 2.6.18 kernel in PCLinuxOS 2007 (Debian Etch is also built on that kernel) is perhaps the best ever for the Gateway in that it controls the CPU fan with no intervention. The intervention needed in other kernels is slight (a single line in /etc/rc.local usually does it), but it's nice to have it done automatically.

Again, I'm not a huge fan of KDE, and I find that distros that are either KDE- or GNOME-centric tend to treat the other desktop environment as something of a second-class citizen.

I've had Fedora in the back of my mind for a while. Seeing all the packages available is very encouraging. And the Fedora community looks like a very good resource in terms of getting things working. I imagine that quite a bit of RHEL information would apply to Fedora as well, giving the distro an even deeper bench.

I'm not crazy about the length of support for a given Fedora release, which looks to be 12 to 13 months. I'd feel better with the 18 months that Ubuntu's non-LTS releases get, or even a full 2 years. Compromising on length of support is something I'm willing to do at this time for something that potentially gives me all the packages I want and that runs well besides.

As far as the availability of packages goes, Fedora acquits itself well. I have run it from the live CD before, and it seemed to do well on the Gateway.

In a slightly related matter, my install of Fedora 9 on my Power Mac G4/466 didn't go so well. The X configuration was horrible, and the distro ran much slower than Debian Etch on the same hardware. And Debian did a perfect X configuration for the internal graphics card and huge LaCie electron22blue monitor. Sure I could've used the information from the xorg.conf in Debian to properly modify the same config file in Fedora, but with such a performance hit, it didn't seem worth it.

Since the 1.3 GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM in the Gateway offers much more power than the 466 MHz and 384 MB in the G4, Fedora seems to run fine on the faster machine.

And now that I have the Ubuntu LTS as my main distro (and hopefully a trouble-free one once I replace that shaky power plug), it's time to try something else.

First I need to keep copies of the xorg.conf, my CPU-fan script and rc.local from Debian Lenny in case I do a reinstall. Then I need to back up the /home files and consider adding a separate /home partition for the secondary distro (Ubuntu already has a separate /home partition).

Again, I'm not happy about the 13-month life cycle of any given Fedora release, and I really don't need a cutting-edge kernel for my not-cutting-edge hardware (unless, of course, it makes a cheap wireless adapter work), but with /home on its own partition, and Fedora installing GRUB on the root partition instead of the master boot record, with the GRUB on the MBR chainloading to the Fedora partition, it shouldn't be hard to roll Fedora out and something else in.

I could change my mind ... or not.

Update: OpenSUSE offers about two years of support per release, and that is enough to get me interested.

I'm downloading new OpenSUSE 11 and Fedora 9 ISOs now, and I'll burn them in the morning.

One of the best sites out there, How to Forge, shows you how to install Debian while running Windows, ending up with a dual-boot Windows/Debian box.

A great idea, for sure.

Here's another way to do it, good for Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSuse, Arch Linux or Debian, the site claims.

By making "intellectual property" deals with commercially oriented distributors of Linux, Microsoft isn't alienating anybody it hasn't turned off already.

So far, the two companies that have inked such deals -- Xandros and Novell -- are focused on selling server operating systems to large businesses. And while they may have community involvement, they're not community-oriented, like the Debian distro from which Xandros is derived, or even the wildly popular Ubuntu (itself a Debian derivative).

So Microsoft is sticking with business-centric companies for these deals, and I suspect the corporate customers of Xandros and Novell will, for the most part, applaud anything that keeps them from being harassed by Microsoft. And that legal pledge of non-harassment now becomes a marketing peg that Novell and Xandros can use to sell more server software. It's dirty business, it alienates the very people who are most passionate about your products, but it just might work for those involved.

That is, unless the GPLv3 -- the new free-software license designed to stop this kind of activity -- keeps it all from happening.

Author and free-software guru Richard Stallman puts it this way:

"Software patents are a vicious and absurd system that puts all software developers in danger of being sued by companies they have never heard of, as well as by all the megacorporations in the field. Large programs typically combine thousands of ideas, so it is no surprise if they implement ideas covered by hundreds of patents. Megacorporations collect thousands of patents, and use those patents to bully smaller developers. Patents already obstruct free software development."

As this story develops, keep an eye on Red Hat and Canonical. Red Hat, the biggest and probably longest-standing seller of commercial Linux product, has not entered into any such deal with Microsoft, and it's not for lack of trying on Microsoft's part (they go for the bigger fish first). And Canonical -- maker of the ultra-popular Ubuntu distro (you know, the one now being shipped with Dell PCs) -- risks alienating its large, active community if it made any deal with MS.

The problem with this whole can of worms is that Microsoft is gambling on never going to court. Once proceedings do start -- and I predict they eventually will -- Microsoft will have to name the patents it claims Linux and the other open-source programs are infringing upon, and then the advocates of free software will be able to challenge those patents in court. That won't be good PR for MS. And the legitimacy of many of these patents -- of which Microsoft is amassing thousands -- is questionable, if experts are to be believed. Among those who think Microsoft has overstepped is Linus Torvalds, the man who began the Linux project back in the '90s.

Where this all leaves the desktop -- i.e. the non-server segment of the market-- is more of a mystery. While corporations all around the world are paying big bucks for supported Linux and for Windows server products, too, the desktop market for operation systems in is a state of extreme flux.

Microsoft is doing all it can to discontinue sales of Windows XP to push the new Windows Vista, even though most of the hardware out there today isn't ready for it. And while Linux is sufficiently mature on the desktop for most users (marshaling more over with the huge amounts of free software that are relatively easy to install and very easy to maintain), there's no real retail market for Linux desktops, meaning anything that Red Hat or Novell is selling is not looking any better than Ubuntu, Mepis or any of the dozens of other top distros that have a desktop focus and which are totally, completely free for users.

At this point, even Ubuntu-maker Canonical knows the money is not in boxed, shrink-wrapped software but in the support of that software -- something Red Hat has been doing successfully and profitably for years now.

That's probably why Microsoft is making its move. It can probably handle shareing the server market with Linux because there are many, many enterprise users who not only won't but can't afford to pay Microsoft server software prices, even if they wanted to move over from Linux. And for the most part, such a move is not something these businesses and other entities are even contemplating.

But on the desktop, the MS Office suite has been under attack from the free Open Office for quite some time. And Open Office can run just as well under Windows as it does on Linux. (If it ever comes to Mac in a form that's as easy to install as it is on PC, look out!) Open Office, the Mozilla-created Thunderbird mail client and even the GNOME and KDE office suites just keep chipping away at the Microsoft revenue base. (And that's why Microsoft is fighting Open Office's open document format in favor of its own "open" standard.)

Once you lose the apps, next thing to go is the OS.

I do a lot of testing of operating systems -- many versions of Windows, many more of Linux -- and I'm not one who says Linux is better 100 percent of the time. Windows has its strengths, along with many weaknesses, and the claims made for Linux are often overblown. I can boot Windows 2000 on machines of questionable vintage and get a lot of things done, seldom crashing (the opposite of the crash-tastic Windows 98), with very forgiving video and audio support. Pity that MS isn't selling Windows 2000 for $20 a disc. I'd love to get XP and do more testing with it ... but one thing remains ...

Windows costs money, especially when you're not using the version that shipped with your PC. And Microsoft structures Windows to, shall we say, suggest that you purchase even more software from them, as well as software from other vendors, for such tasks as security, virus-prevention, file compression, graphic design, backup, recovery, disk maintenance and more.

In contrast, Linux is almost always free, with free upgrades, free utilities and applications (although some do cost money and are often worth it), open sources (letting you see what it's made out of, and letting you and others help fix what's wrong with it) -- and you can make one, 50 or 1,000 copies and do what you wish with them.

The power to try out hundreds of distributions and thousands of applications without paying anything is key. I'm not saying that everything in the world ought to be free, but for software the free way appears to be working just fine.

And if you're a corporation or individual who is uncomfortable with free software (and, presumably, just as uncomfortable stealing it from Microsoft, Adobe, etc.), there are boxed Linux (and other open-source) products out there at retail. And when you do pay, as I've said, you're often paying for technical support, which could very well be worth the money.

All Microsoft needs to do to "beat" Linux is to be better, to do what its customers -- current and future -- want. And isn't being "better" a whole lot better than issuing threats via technology reporters?

Microsoft should cast its eye toward Apple -- a company that uses better design, functionality and, well, Apple-ness to sell more stuff.

Being better -- it's what should be for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's dinner.

Following Microsoft's patent/payment pact with Novell the Redmond, Wash., computer OS and application giant has made yet another deal with a Linux company, this time with Xandros.

Xandros produces a Debian-based distribution for desktops and servers that already strives to be comforting and comfortable to Windows users, and in the current climate of Microsoft sabre-rattling would seemingbly be comforting itself and its own customers with assurances that they won't be sued for possible patent infringement.

From CNet:

Over the next five years, the two companies said, they will work on improving interoperability between their servers to improve systems management.

The pact calls for Microsoft to provide patent covenants for Xandros customers that ensure they are not infringing on Microsoft's intellectual property, according to the companies.

Xandros will also ship software for desktop productivity applications that translates between the Open Document Format and OpenXML, which is Microsoft's own document format.

The agreement will make it easier for Xandros customers to run a mix of Xandros and Microsoft software, Andreas Typaldos, CEO of Xandros, said in a statement.

Easier from a legal sense? Or a technical sense?

While Xandros isn't one of the Linux fanboy favorites (though it holds the No. 28 spot on Distrowatch, it is based on the non-commercial, totally free Debian, a company that will not be getting into bed with Microsoft, I assure you.

Microsoft might not be fond of going to court, preferring to partner up with its enemies, real and imagined, but I have a good feeling that this one is eventually going to end up right where MS doesn't want to be -- in court.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Desktoplinux.com has all the reaction to Dell's announcement that it will load Ubuntu Linux onto select desktop and laptop models. It's a good way to find out the mood of those behind the other Linux distros, including Red Hat, Novell, Xandros, Linspire plus a bunch of analysts. It's important reading, for this week anyway.

Here's the part I keyed in on:

Looking ahead, (Raven Zachary, the 451 Group's open-source research director) thinks, "We'll see some wait-and-see from the other hardware vendors: 'Let's see how Dell does with this deal.' Also, you could see Red Hat, Novell, and others swarm in to the other hardware vendors to avoid an Ubuntu sweep."

So can we expect a lot of similar deals in the coming weeks/months? Who's going to bring HP/Compaq, Lenovo and the other hardware makers to the mat?

It's not official, but sources tell Desktoplinux.com that when Dell begins offering PCs pre-equipped with Linux, the distribution that will go on those boxes will be ... Ubuntu:

Analysis -- Officially, Dell Inc. hasn't said a word yet about which Linux it will be preloading on its desktops and laptops. Several sources within Dell, however, have told DesktopLinux.com that Dell's desktop Linux pick is going to be Ubuntu.

While unable to confirm this through official Dell channels, we have heard the same story now from several internal Dell sources. They tell us that the Austin, Texas, computer giant will be preinstalling the newly released Ubuntu 7.04. These systems will be released in late May 2007.

That means Red Hat (RHEL/Fedora) and Novell (SLED/openSUSE) will NOT be the "winners" of the Dell-puts-Linux-on-the-desktop-for-you sweepstakes. Part of the reason has to be the ability of Canonical to support Ubuntu for those willing to pay, and the vast Ubuntu fan base offering support through the forums for the rest.

Another question: Will Dell's probable embrace of Ubuntu change its Linux offerings in the server market? Currently Dell offers servers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a "non-factory install" -- and for a pricey $1,900 for a three-year subscription, and SUSE Enterprise Linux for much, much less (depending on the length of your "subscription, either 3 or 1 years, you get a $101 to $500 discount from the base cost with Windows Server 2003) -- or with no OS for a $799 discount from the Windows-equipped product. Will they throw Ubuntu on your server AND give you an $800 break?

Regarding the desktop, I think Dell made the right choice. Ubuntu continues to be white-hot in its popularity, and new releases continue to stream out every six months. The majority of people who answered Dell's recent inquiry about what they wanted on THEIR next Dell asked for Linux -- and specifically Ubuntu, so Dell is betting wisely.

And with Dell focusing at least some of its PC offerings on being compatible with Ubuntu, it can only mean good things as far as other hardware vendors doing the right thing and supporting Linux on their products.

What remains to be seen is whether there will be a discount for buying a desktop system with Ubuntu as opposed to Windows (be it Vista or XP). Microsoft can't be very happy about this, but with Dell being probably their biggest customer (or at least right up there with Compaq/HP), Redmond's leverage isn't what it would be with a smaller vendor.

And for Dell's customers, the lure of a discount -- and all of the free software in Ubuntu -- will be enough to entice them to try Linux. It's a gamble for Dell, but with Vista's current problems, the odds are in the hardware giant's favor. It's also a win for Ubuntu, which has already experienced phemonenal growth and can probably handle the much-higher stakes that the Dell deal will bring.

Again, the loser is Microsoft. Preinstalled Linux (and non-installed Windows) hits them where they live. And if Dell and Ubuntu make it clear that Open Office can sub for MS Office, it can't be good for Microsoft.

As I wrote in the final Thin Puppy Torture Test entry, I wanted to try some other distributions with the Maxspeed Maxterm thin client, so I finally shut it down.

After that, I opened up the box, unplugged the CF-to-IDE adapter and plugged in a 14.4 GB IDE hard drive by IBM and a 32X TDK CD-RW drive. I had trouble before even booting many Debian-derived Linux distributions, and I'm not exactly well-versed in the jumper settings for a hard drive and CD drive chained to a single IDE interface (there's only one IDE plug on this VIA-equipped Mini-ITX motherboard).

After leaving both drives as masters, nothing was happening, so I made the HD the master and the CD the slave, and then both were recognized by the BIOS.

And since this is a thin client, there's nowhere to physically mount any drives, so the thin client box is on its side, with the power cable (I had to use a splitter to power both drives from the single power plug) and IDE ribbon cable poking out from the box and the drives stacked on top of it. Man, I didn't know that a hard drive throws off so much heat. It's a far cry from when the thin client was running Puppy 2.14 from a Compact Flash card.

So I had a bunch of discs ready to try. I had previously booted Zen Walk 4.2, so I didn't want to try that one right away. The Fedora Core live CD wouldn't boot -- it kept rebooting the machine in a loop without actually doing anything. I tried to run the alternate install CD of Xubuntu 6.10, and the install went pretty far before I got repeated warnings like this:

Debootstrap Warning
Warning: Failure while installing base packages. This will be re-attempted up to 5 times.

I hit enter and kept going a bunch of times, but the install just wouldn't happen. Previously, the Xubuntu live CD wouldn't run, so I didn't even try it.

I tried openSUSE's net-install CD, and that wouldn't boot either.

Now this box is pretty untypical and tempermental -- when I first got it, the only thing that would run was Puppy Linux. DSL wouldn't boot then, but I tried it again and it not only booted but installed on the hard drive. Near the end of the install, the installer script told me I'd have to reboot, and I figured the system would do it automatically. It didn't, so I rebooted with ctrl-alt-del. The machine restarted and asked me to set root and user passwords (I elected multi-user during the install). I set the password and was off and running with the new DSL 3.3 on my hard drive!

The fact that of all the Linux distributions I've tried, I've only gotten Puppy, DSL and Zen Walk to boot is a testament to the people who put them together.

I should probably try to install Xubuntu again ... or Zen Walk, possibly dual-booting with DSL (I selected Grub as the boot loader, not that I know how to tweak it yet).

But so far, DSL 3.3 is running great on the thin client. Configuration of static IP networking was easy -- it's pretty much the same as in Knoppix, with a terminal window opening and a standard script running. I haven't checked the sound yet (gotta plug in the headphones), but I'll do that soon.

And I'm writing this entry on Firefox 1.0.6, the main browser with DSL 3.3, which also offers the light Dillo that runs so great in Puppy (but which really can't do Movable Type as well as a CSS-equipped browser).

As I wrap up this entry, I have no doubt that just about all of these distros mentioned would install on a "normal" system, and I acknowledge and understand that a thin client with a rare motherboard, non-Intel (or AMD) CPU and single IDE header might be far from normal, but the fact that some distros will boot on this somewhat exotic platform begs the question -- why won't they all?

SUSE root is a nice evangelist-type site about Novell's SUSE -- specifically openSUSE, that tries to answer the questions that could be asked by a potential user of this extremely popular distro.

Looking at The Distrowatch top 100 distributions, there's Ubuntu at No. 1, followed by openSUSE and Fedora. I'm thinking of trying openSUSE because it's so darn popular, is meant for business use -- and I just want to see how it runs.

I know there's the whole Novell-Microsoft controversy over the two companies partnering and MS' subsequent patent-violation accusation against the entire rest of the Linux community, but sometiimes you've just got to see how the big dogs run, right?

Back to SUSEroot ... Here's their answer to "Should I try SUSE Linux?" Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it may be more honest:

There are a lot of things being said about Linux that are not true. Some well-intentioned Linux fans sometimes try to paint Linux as perfect for everyone and that it will solve all your computing problems; this is a disservice to people considering Linux and to the Linux community because people may try Linux with unrealistic expectations and give up on it when they find out so many things they were told by "Linux Superfans" were untrue or misleading.

I guess that if I'd never tried Linux before and knew very little about it, SUSEroot might just make me say, "Why?" Here's their outro:

Hopefully this has helped someone decide if switching to SUSE Linux and indeed Linux itself, is something they want to do. SUSE and Linux aren't for everyone. If you do decide to try SUSE or another Linux distribution, do some research to find out which one is right for you, make sure your hardaware is compatible, switch with realistic expectations, and realize that there will be a phase where you will be confused and frustrated a lot of the time. SUSE and Linux are evolving very quickly, if you do try Linux and find that you don't like it, give it another try later on, you may find that it has become easier for you or the feature you needed has been incorporated.

Again, if anything, it's reasoned and realistic. In a way, it supports my contention that Windows XP is a very good, stable system, and you have to look inward (oy, that sounds weird) for why you want to run Linux. The site does mention the cost factor -- buying a copy of Windows for every box, and updates, being very expensive. But there's no MS-bashing going on.

The site should pimp this page more, which tells how to install Fluxbox, the lightweight window manager that can make a slower system work better -- way better than with Win XP.

Here's SUSEroot's take on SUSE's place in the Linux pantheon:

As far as "cool factor" goes, a SUSE user is not mocked as much as a Mandrake or Linspire (Lindows) user, but we're aparently inferior to Debian or Slackware users (and certainly subordinate to the guys who shun distributions all together and build their own package). So if you're the kind of person who thinks your operating system says something about you, there you go.

I'm left feeling nonplussed. I guess I want to see some passion, you know? Why are you running SUSE?

Maybe Fedora's fans are more forceful ... maybe not. You sure can't beat the Ubuntu people when it comes to pimping their OS.